Since the first human eye saw a leaf in Devonian sandstone and a puzzled finger reached to touch it, sadness has lain over the heart of man. By this tenuous thread of living protoplasm, stretching backward into time, we are… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share
We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests, and hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
“Taking a final pleasure in what the wind can neither proclaim nor destroy, I am a student of nightfall, I claim no other profession.” — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
We are one of many appearances of the thing called Life; we are not its perfect image, for it has no perfect image except… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
Perhaps a creature of so much ingenuity and deep memory is almost bound to grow alienated from his world, his fellows, and the objects around him. He suffers from a nostalgia for which there is no remedy upon earth except as it is to be found in the enlightenment of the spirit--some ability to have a perceptive rather than an… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share
To have dragons one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore. — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man. — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
The future is neither ahead nor behind, on one side or another. Nor is it dark or light. It is contained within ourselves; its… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
Out of the choked Devonian waters emerged sight and sound and the music that rolls invisible through the composer's brain. They are there still in the ooze along the tideline, though no one notices. The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share
“I once saw, on a flower pot in my own living room, the efforts of a field mouse to build a remembered field. I… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
Lights come and go in the night sky. Men, troubled at last by the things they build, may toss in their sleep and dream… — Loren Eiseley Copy Share Image
